One of the first things that a job seeker will do in their quest to find their dream job is to simply run a Google search of their desired job title, plus a location. If you were to perform a search like this, there will be too many results to go through (Googling marketing jobs in New Jersey yields about 40,100,000 results). Most of the results on the first page are populated by job board sites and websites such as Craigslist. These websites use a technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to increase their page rankings to show as the top results in Search Engine’s Results Pages (SERPs). With Google only displaying 10 results per page, competition for these spots can be very intense.

Ranking high in the SERPs has a few distinct advantages. The first is that it makes it much easier on your company’s recruiters if the job applicants are finding your company. If a person is looking for a job similar to the one you have open, they can find your position on Google and not be distracted by filters and other positions available on a job board site. Then, a recruiter can look through those who have applied and find the most qualified candidates. A second important advantage is that being featured in search engines is a free service. Instead of paying to be featured on job boards, you can organically drive traffic to your careers page and hire candidates free of charge. A third advantage is that positions that used to be difficult to fill are now simpler to find a perfect match for. If you have a job opening, there is a perfect match for the job out there, and there is a pretty good chance that they use Google. Therefore, by making your job optimized for Google searches, you have a better chance of that particular candidate seeing your open position.

Many people wonder how Google decides what websites to put in the top results for a specific search. One important factor is the text embedded within the URL. A URL with a lot of code and no keywords will not rank well in the SERPs, (ex. /OA_HTML/OA.jsp?page=/oracle/apps/irc/candidateSelfService/webui/VisVacDispPG&akRegionApplicationId=821&transactionid=1807264944&retainAM=), because nothing in that URL was typed into Google. If your URL looks like this, “jobs/2172/marketing-associate/job”, Google can easily see that this is a job for a marketing associate. A URL strong, such as this one, is more likely to show in the top 10 results in Google because the webpage URL has been optimized for SEO.

Another key factor in SEO is the on-page content of the page. If the job is titled, “155412- Mkt. Assoc.”, Google will have trouble indexing it. On the other hand, if you were to title your job “Marketing Associate in Your Town, New Jersey – 155412”, Google would easily be able to identify that text and help make your page rank higher.